Cheetah DEFINITION: 1 any living organism, excluding plants and bacteria: most animals can move about independently and have specialized sense organs that enable them to react quickly to stimuli: animals do not have cell walls, nor do they make food by photosynthesis 2 any such organism other than a human being, esp. a mammal or, [...]

Homes Many animals build temporary or permanent homes for themselves and their young. Birds occupy their nests only while they are incubating eggs and feeding the helpless nestling’s A few fish make temporary nests for their young. No animal dwelling has excited more wonder and interest than the lodge built by the beaver. Almost as [...]

Intelligence Most animal activities that appear to indicate intelligence are simply instinctive. The most intelligent animals are the apes and monkeys. Dogs and elephants have been trained to serve humans in many ways. Horses, seals, porpoises, lions, and tigers are often taught to perform in circuses and aquariums. Talking birds, such as parrots, parakeets, and [...]

The Largest Group of Animals The phylum Arthropoda (“jointed foot”) has the largest number of species. In fact, about 90 percent of the million or more species living on the Earth today are arthropods. The insects total more than 800,000 species. Other arthropods include the centipedes and millipedes; the arachnids (spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites); and [...]

  Giraffe beetle. Also Giraffe weevil. DEFINITION:1 any of a large order (Coleoptera) of insects, including weevils, with biting mouth parts and hard front wings (elytra ) that cover the membranous hind wings when the hind wings are folded 2 any insect resembling a beetle. There are more species of beetles than of any other [...]

Water scavenger beetles include more than 1,000 species of primarily tropical aquatic beetles, with approximately 200 species native to North America. Like the true water beetles, water scavenger beetles must find a way of supplying themselves with oxygen while they forage underwater. At the water’s surface, the beetles project their antennae out of the water [...]

  Monarch butterfly DEFINITION: (or colouring) natural colouration of certain organisms allowing them to blend in with their normal environment and escape detection by enemies. As animals evolved, most of them developed body colours and markings that improved their chances of surviving. This adaptive mechanism, known as protective colouration, may serve any number of functions. [...]

DEFINITION. any of a large family (Aphididae) of small, soft-bodied homopteran insects that suck the juice from plants. On a stem or on the underside of a leaf sometimes a crowded colony of plant lice, or aphids, may be visible. They are parasites that have sharp sucking beaks and live on the sap of plants. [...]

Helen Zille sounding like an African A fascinating result of evolution is the phenomenon of mimicry, the superficial resemblance of one organism to another that gives the mimicking organism some advantage or protection from predators. Many plants and animals have evolved such resemblances in order to increase their own chances of survival. A walking stick, [...]

Most people think of wasps only as bugs with bad tempers and sharp stings. Actually, wasps exhibit remarkably sophisticated behaviour and are often helpful, especially to farmers, because they help to check the population of other insects that may be harmful to crops. The many species that feed on nectar travel from flower to flower [...]